Hammond L-100 Tonewheel Organ

H

a

m

m

o

n

d

L

-

1

0

0

T

o

n

e

w

h

e

e

l

O

r

g

a

n

The small Hammond L-100 Tonewheel Organ from 1962 is equipped with a mechanical tone generator and drawbars. All designations from L-101 to L-143 only include cabinet variants. The sound is perfected by combining it with a Leslie, which produces a vibrato. A Hammond organ cannot be tuned; all other instruments must be tuned to it. It has a built-in controller for 700-series Leslie

The L-100 has two manuals with 44 keys (Hammond organs generally have 61 keys), spanning 3 1/2 octaves. The organ is equipped with upper presets Clarinet, Trumpe, Full Organ and Drawbars, 9 upper drawbars 16', 5' 1/3, 8', 4', 2' 2/3, 2' ,1' 3/5 ,1' 2/3, 1', upper percussion X and Y, percussion soft/loud and fast/slow decay tabs, upper manual Vibrato and Chorus, Small and Normal, 7 lower drawbars 8', 4', 2' 2/3, 2', 1' 3/5, 1' 1/3, 1', bass pedal drawbar 16', brightness tab, soft volume tab, all-valve amplification circuits, built-in reverb tank and tube preamp. The sound generation begins in the gearwheel oscillator. Metal tone wheels with a wavy edge rotate in front of electromagnetic pickups. The waveform causes a movement away from and towards the iron core. This changes the magnetic field, which induces alternating voltage in the coil, resulting in alternating current. The shape of the wheel leads to a sinusoidal oscillation. The oscillator contains 91 tone wheels with different numbers of teeth. Several tones can be assigned to the sine tones on each key via drawbars. The Hammond sound was supplemented by a mechanical reverb, a vibrato and electronic percussion.